I got my first job out of college because of LinkedIn. I graduated in 2009 and spent my entire senior year networking in order to land a job in the horrible recession. I heard a statistic that nationwide, only 19% of college graduates my year had procured a job for after graduation. These numbers were quite troubling for me.

Oh hey, that's me!

So what I did was find Miami University Alumni on LinkedIn who worked at places I was interested in and sent them an invitation to connect, along with a personal message. I asked each person for 15 minutes of their time and each and every person I reached out said yes. Throughout my career, I have continued to use LinkedIn for various purposes.

So I was a little surprised to read the recent New York Post headline, “LeftOut of LinkedIn: Women missing from networking site.” Why were women being ‘left out’?

According to a 2011 PewResearch Center study, 56 percent of social-network site users are female, but LinkedIn users include nearly twice as many men (63 percent) as women (37 percent).

Why is this? According to the article, it’s because:

1. Women tend to keep social media usage for personal purposes
2. Women prefer to network face-to-face

“There are a couple of reasons for this,” Nicole Williams, LinkedIn’s Connection Director and author of the book “Girl on Top,” explains. “To begin with, women tend to network in person more predominantly than online. Additionally, while men are more comfortable asking for introductions or reaching out to second- and third-level networks, women prefer to create deeper connections with or through people they know.”

LinkedIn’s Williams, naturally, defends the company. “Women tend to keep social media usage for personal purposes,” says Williams. “But with the workplace becoming more and more gender-agnostic every day, this is a tool they should be looking to more. Since LinkedIn is specifically for business, it’s the ideal platform for someone who wants to keep their personal and business social-networking separate,” she says.

And some women swear by LinkedIn.

“While I enjoy to network in person, I find LinkedIn is a great way for me to reach out to people in a business capacity without the contrived feeling you’d get from doing so on personal social-networking sites like Facebook, MySpace or Google Plus,” says Jamie Maxner, assistant director of a New York City-based nonprofit.

And I swear by it too.

Women aren’t being “left out,” they are choosing not to be involved. There is a difference. Just because women prefer to network face-to-face doesn’t mean they can’t lay foundation pieces virtually. My belief is that LinkedIn and other online tools only help the in-person experience, bettering your face-to-face interaction.

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